Reinventing Yourself - Step II. - The Avatar (part I.)

How to Craft a New YOU

Have you defined your WHATs?
Your HOWs?
And have you written them down?

If you’re blushing because a guilty “NO” is on your tongue or just wondering “What?” because you haven’t read the preceding article, let me just redirect you back to the necessary pre-step: Episode V. - The Process

If, however, your mind is full of thoughts about your attitude and habits, strengths & weaknesses, beliefs, limits and so on - shortly, if you’ve been thinking about your Self a lot, you most likely have enough material to proceed to the third, highly engaging but also very demanding step of the Self-Reinvention process.

See the other preceding episodes here:
1. Episode I.

2. Episode II.

3. Episode III.

4. Episode IV.

Avatar Creation - Thinking Process

Before we begin and you start pulling out all your notes and ideas, it’s necessary to understand how you should think about this process to make it successful.

There are TWO REQUIREMENTS:

STRATEGIC DETACHMENT - First requirement is to separate your Self from the idea or vision in your head. In Nietzsche’s terms, separating your First Nature from your Second Nature.

Throughout the series you’ll see me using the word “Self” in diverse variations as “about your Self” in this separated form with capital “S” more often. Reason for this is to emphasize the Self as a separate inner entity, so that you can think about it in this sort of detached manner and release your creativity to the fullest. It’s very helpful if not necessary to think about the creative process as something happening outside of your Self. It makes the idea more graspable and the whole process much less restrained.

Like a painter with a canvas, a sculptor with a marble or a musician with their instrument the masterpiece is happening outside of them. In front of their eyes, at their hands and outside of their ears. And even though your creation - your new persona - is not nearly as fast visible as their work and at first only exists in your head, you must adopt their detached attitude nevertheless.

The stronger the strategic detachment the higher the CLARITY of your vision and intention. The higher the clarity of your vision and intention the better the ultimate result.

Lastly, becoming detached doesn’t mean becoming cold! No, no, no! Not in this case. You need to stay passionate about the idea in your head. Passion is the main and necessary ingredient in any artistic endeavour. The detachment means simply a mental separation of “thing” you’re trying to create from your Self. (Even if - or may I say especially if - the “thing” is a persona, thus nothing physically tangible)

RESOLUTE CREATIVITY - The second requirement is to assert a dominant position. Eehm no, not that one you cheeky rascal. I’m talking about ATTITUDE. Have you ever dealt with any even mid-famous artist? They all have an attitude. Well not all, but a lot of them do. Oftentimes not a glaringly sympathetic one at the first look. They might give the impression of being rather cocky, egoistic, even domineering.

I do not imply that you need to become this way. But you should feel strongly in charge. You need to feel like a Master of your craft, even if you’re just a slowly beginning apprentice. When I say master here, I mean role rather than skill level.

The main thing about having a “master attitude” towards your craft is being resolute and decisive. Coming back to your gathered WHATs & HOWs, you need to be very clear about what you want your end result to be and what you don’t want it to be.

Any creative act is an act of courage.
It takes guts to create something where nothing has been before.

(For all my bookworms, if you're interested in the creative process in itself I highly recommend you the book “Courage to Create” from the psychologist Rollo May. Another one would be Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act” - Both a masterpiece of a book.)

Therefore be bold, resolute and clear about what you want to create.

The wild thing is that these two requirements actually later become two phases between which you’ll keep switching back and forth. But that's subject to the last step - Transformation - so let’s leave it for later.

Avatar - A New Persona

With these two requirements on your mind, notes on paper and vision in front of your eyes you can slowly approach the craftsman phase itself.

This part of Self-Reinvention is about one word and one word only.
CLARITY.

You need to become absolutely crystal clear about the persona you want to create for yourself and what you want to project into the outside world.

To put this as simple as possible:

Creating your AVATAR is based on two things:
WHO YOU WANT TO BECOME
&
WHO YOU DON’T WANT TO BE ANYMORE.

Realize: The only person who knows who you’re now (what’s your true First Nature) is YOU. Friends might have an idea, family might have some deeper insight, but only you truly know. Everyone else sees a projection, interpret it for themselves and call it your reputation. Yet all they truly have is an opinion.
A thing of their own making, not yours.

As Machiavelli beautifully puts it:

“Everyone sees what you appear to be,
few experience what you really are.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)

The concept of creating your own avatar is thus to think deeply & clearly about what you want them to see and what you don’t want them to see.

The Importance of Clarity

We made a point why clarity is important earlier - more clarity = better end result.
But how do you achieve it ?

Let’s bring back the opening quote from Nietzsche:

Oh dear Friedrich, how do you say so much by saying so little. (Btw that’s a chief characteristic of any deep thinker - think of Gandalf - “the riddle man”)

In this quote Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of CLARITY & RESOLUTENESS.

He argues that to be happy you should have a very clear idea of what you want and what you don’t want. A point we made earlier several times. You need to be relentlessly clear about what you say NO and to what you say YES to.
The “straight line” is a metaphor for CLARITY.

And the “Goal”?
Well, that’s the vision in your head.
The soon to be existing avatar.
By this goal, all YESes and NO's are determined.

Thus this Nietzsche’s quote is not just a recipe for happiness but also for a successful avatar creation.

IN SUMMARY: TO CREATE YOUR AVATAR YOU NEED TO HAVE CLARITY in THREE ASPECTS:

a) What you say YES to (what you want)

b) What you say NO to (what you don’t want)

c) What’s your ultimate goal (what exactly should the result look like)

Next time, we’ll take a look at which personal categories you should define your final avatar.

Thank you for reading & Stay tuned!

See you soon,
fellow thinker!

YT: Nietzsche Academy